Review of Grandmaster Michael Moorcock’s 1965 novel City of the Beast

Last year, Nathan Brazil of the SF Site reviewed the Paizo Publishing reprint of City of the Beast (1965, 2007), a well-known Martian science fiction novel written by British author and SFWA Grandmaster Michael Moorcock. As Brazil notes, City of the Beast was penned in the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition and originally published in 1965 as Warriors of Mars, under Moorcock’s pseudonym, Edward P. Bradbury. Chronicling character Michael Kane’s adventures, it is the first novel in Moorcock’s trilogy about the Red Planet.

While Brazil’s review is generally positive, he does have one criticism: “this book cannot rise above the quality of a shadow. Kane is not Carter, Shizala is not Deja Thoris, and Vashu is not Barsoom. City of the Beast and its sequels are without a doubt entertaining, but the real thing is still preferable, and available.”

Pictured: 2007 reprint by Paizo Publishing.